“This settlement is a full and final settlement of the proceedings under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act without any admission of criminal or civil liability.”

Heh, there may not be an admission but you don’t get up $43 million unless they have you by the short and curlies.

The $43m settlement is the latest twist in a saga dating back to 2001 when Yan arrived in New Zealand.

He first made headlines for his links to the previous Labour government and the decision to give him a New Zealand passport, despite having multiple identities and an Interpol alert against his name.

Former Labour Minister Shane Jones overruled the advice of DIA officials, who said Yan did not meet the good character test for citizenship, following lobbying from Dover Samuels, a Labour MP at the time.

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Comments (39)

Padriv Ustoev

This is bullshit. Why don’t they just put him away. Why is he so precious that he gets to pay his way out?

I’ll tell you why. Because if not he will squeal who and how is complicit in money laundering. This includes National and Labour. Both sides have a dusty snout when it comes to laundering Chinese money.

Former Labour Minister Shane Jones overruled the advice of DIA officials, who said Yan did not meet the good character test for citizenship, following lobbying from Dover Samuels, a Labour MP at the time.

By coincidence he was a donor to various Labour Party MPs.

😀

You can’t trust the National Labour Party, they’re always looking after their rich mates instead of doing what’s right for the country.

hmmokrightitis

WineOh

This should have been a case of “The Money AND the Bag”, not either or. Charge him with money-laundering, put him in the clink, and confiscate the money. Back room deals makes this stink – what are they hiding?

Apparently China wants him back for fraud charges and is on their most wanted list, the immigration minister says they have received queries from the Chinese government around requirements to extradite him back to China. Did the dirty deal include an assurance of non-extradition?

This guy is bad news, weren’t there also charges of domestic violence against him, which were subsequently withdrawn when the battered wife said she didn’t want to press charges? http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10416871/New-Donghua-Liu-donation-uncovered
“On Friday, Liu appeared in Auckland District Court for sentencing on domestic violence charges, having pleaded guilty in April to assaulting his partner, Juan Zhang, and her mother, Lunju Wang. However, his lawyer, Paul Davison QC, told the court Liu wished to vacate his earlier guilty pleas, and lawyers for Liu and the Crown will next meet in October, for a “disputed facts” hearing.” (Aug 2014)

Notsofast

nz_aj

Clearly the Labour party made a mistake in granting citizenship, therefore it can be taken away, along with residency.
I have no problem with him being extradited, even with a promise of no execution.
I hope the costs to the taxpayer are being deducted from the $43M.

Given the Dotcom case, it’d be useful if parliament could vote on these matters to save time & money.

Richard

kowtow

I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for “progressive” members of our crusading media to keep banging on and on and on about this case and its implications concerning institutionalised corruption at the very highest levels of political life here in open , free and fair Aotearoa.

ps Liu ( or whatever his names are) had better watch it , full and final settlements in Aotearoa have a nasty habit of coming back to life again and again………

burt

towaka

I remember when the story broke..it was due to Internal Affairs officials being so disgusted with ”Bill liu” (as he was known back then) being granted citizenship against their advice that they leaked the details to Ian Wishart.

Off course the MSM had no real interest in getting to the bottom of such dodgy happenings being a Labour Government at the time and the players involved (Jones,Cunliffe,Samuels) really got away scott free.

Another reason why we need an independent commission on corruption in New Zealand..the politicians are not interested nor the MSM in looking to hard.

wiseowl

Notsofast

It should be very clearly understood that Chinese are buying every piece of land within 20 or 30 kms of the city. I have watched 15 zip in the last three years, the blocks topple like dominos. They will never stop while they can, and obviously it is industrial cash from a generation of slave labour, and the water, services and bulletproof legal protection is the motive.
Maybe someone knows another nationality buying these blocks, 4 to 40 acres.

burt

peterwn

Some of the comments here indicate that there is misunderstandings about the burden of proof in court proceedings. It is commonly understood that to be guilty of a crime the prosecution must prove it ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. However for non-criminal matters it is on the ‘balance of probabilities’. For example if you fire your motor vehicle to claim the insurance, the police prosecutor may not be able to prove ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that it was arson or fraud or the accused may be acquitted of these charges. However this does not mean the insurance company has to pay up – it can decline to on the ‘balance of probability’ that there was fraud.

Similarly with ‘proceeds of crime’ legislation. Parliament in NZ and various countries have decided that if a person possesses wealth obtained by dubious circumstances, he or she needs to prove on the balance of probabilities that it was obtained legitimately, even though there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt to convict the person of a crime that could have led to the wealth. Granted this is somewhat contentious but it is what Parliament decided. There will be fringe cases, but by and large, the wealth in these cases is the proceeds of crime or money laundering. Legitimate investment income earned on that wealth is also subject to seizure.

In the immediate case there seemed insufficient evidence that the person committed crime in NZ and for whatever reason his extradition to China was not sought – perhaps the Chinese refused to give an undertaking that he would not be executed.

The $42M will be shared with the Chinese government since a portion of it relates to offending under Chinese law.

peterwn

AJP – The ‘government’ meaning PM, Cabinet and Ministers would have had no part in the decision not to prosecute. Crown Law and Police would have made that decision mostly on the basis whether a prosecution had a reasonable chance of succeeding. Doing a major prosecution with little prospect of success would be a waste of taxpayers’ money and valuable court time. There was negotiation but this was over the final amount payable not a prosecution versus payoff trade-off. The final amount would have been the amount the Court would likely to have decided – note too that the Court was asked to ‘sign off’ the agreed amount this being necessary to get the money and property released (eg the Land Registrar would require a copy of the court order to update his registers).

Ed Snack

Peterwn has it correct as far as I can tell. If a successful prosecution could have been done it probably would have been. Likely enough the crimes were largely committed in China and the evidence is probably not of a standard (if even available) to use in an NZ court. And if the death sentence was indeed possible then he can’t be extradited.

It’s probably merely a portion of his “wealth”, but the options appear to be to attempt to prosecute and probably fail (I don’t think that the prosecution service in NZ can be bought that easily), or to attempt to extradite (and again fail if the death penalty is an option or even if not and the punishment would be incompatible with his NZ citizen’s rights), or to negotiate as hard as possible for a civil forfeiture.

Best option to me would be for the Chinese to agree to conditions that would allow him to be extradited, but we can’t control that.

sooty

For a chinese to have that kind of money in his pocket he is a crook! China came out of the dark ages only recently. Prior to this the commies ruled the roost. The only way to get this kind of money is to pinch it, rip someone off, or scim it of the top. How labour ever reckoned he was of good charactor is beyond me. Even me an ex truckie can see that. Had to be anothor fiddle! Our MSM is next to useless, all the want to do look pretty and coment on the bitches of auckland. No wonder they are at the bottom of the list.

@Burt. Donghua is much older. Google him long set of stories on the Herald site from 2014… dodgy lost donations, Rick Barker interesting side trips in China to Chengdu. ..was a big blog story at the time on Whaleoil